November Jazz
by Empatheia
Summary: [Renji x Rangiku] Forever lasted nine days. [AU, set in a lounge in 1970s New York.]


**A/N: **Written for the May round of Bleach flashfics on LiveJournal. AU, but not high school. :D

**xxxxxx**

_**November Jazz**_

**xxxxxx**

_New York City, 1976_

It was a Thursday night in late October the first time she saw him, quietly nursing a neat whiskey in the furthest, smoggiest corner of the lounge. He caught her eye because he looked like the kind of man who _ought_ to be in the front row, downing tall glasses of dark beer and raucously attempting to talk her out of her clothes during a raunchy number.

(Not that that _Court_ was that kind of establishment, mind you, but there were always a few like that and she didn't mind as long as it stayed all in good fun.)

He had red hair, so red that she was certain it had to be artificial, but somehow it looked as though it had grown that way, redder than the lipstick of her best friend on the corner seven avenues over. And it was long, too, which hadn't really been in fashion for a century or so... but it looked good on him, somehow.

Even more obnoxious than the hair, there were angular black tattoos all over his forehead and down his neck, where they disappeared into the edges of his dark shirt. She couldn't help but wonder how extensive they were beyond what she could see.

Despite the belligerence of his physical appearance, she didn't get the sense that he was a hoodlum. As a tested and proven judge of people, she felt justified in not being afraid of him. She was more curious than anything about what had put that look in his eyes, the one that said he wouldn't particularly mind if tomorrow never came.

_Why?_

But there was a set to finish now, so she turned he r attention back to the rest of the audience and decided to approach him afterwards.

However, when the last echoes fell flat into the thick air of the lounge, he was nowhere to be found. Swallowing her disappointment, she set out for home along the freezing pre-dawn streets, burrowing into her thick pink coat. Any one of a dozen customers would have driven her home had she asked, but she would rather lose a toe or three to frostbite than get into a car with one of them. They were gentlemen, sure, but the word of a gentleman trumps that of a washed-up lounge singer any day of the week.

So, she walked home. It was only ten blocks, nothing she couldn't survive. Her long legs were stronger than they looked, and her infamous chest didn't get in the way of her also-infamous left hook. There was nobody around who would mess with her if she had room to swing her purse.

xxxx

To her surprise, the next evening as she stood on stage wearily running through her Friday set of songs, the man with the red hair and tattoos came back. He took the same seat as before, in the far corner, out of reach of the dim lights. It was hard to see him through the glare of the spotlight, but her eyes were used to stage blindness and she could see clearly enough.

Her curiosity blossomed.

However, just as the last night, he slipped out unnoticeably some time during her last song and no matter how hard she searched the streets, she could not find him.

xxxx

Every night thereafter, he came to listen to her sing. He sat in the same seat, ordered the same thing, and never said a word to any of the other patrons. When she was almost finished singing, he invariably got up and left before she could call out to him.

It became something of a comfort to her to have him there. It made her feel that even if nobody else in the lounge was listening, it was worth singing just because he was listening. _Really_ listening, with all his attention.

After a few weeks, she began to wonder what she would do if he stopped coming. The room would seem empty and unfriendly without him. She could hardly remember what it had been like before he'd come-- an aloof room scattered with a few indifferent people come to escape their wives and other duties in their repetitive, dry lives. If he left, could she really go back to singing to that?

She wasn't sure, and it worried her.

xxxx

The breaking point came a little more than a month later, when he smiled before getting up to leave.

That smile galvanized her into action, and she cut her set off with as little after-talk as possible and ran out into the streets to search for him. Today she would talk to him if she had to search until her feet bled.

It was Thanksgiving morning. She had the ingredients for a really spectacular Italian dinner waiting in her fridge. There would be way too much for just herself, and Lisa couldn't come. She'd come down with something nasty and her grandfather had coerced into going home until she could recover. If she could only find this man with the red hair, she'd have someone to share it with _and_ she'd be able to ask him questions to her heart's content.

The sun was well-risen by the time she gave up-- it had to be almost ten. She'd been walking for hours and was exhausted. Besides, that dinner wouldn't cook itself. She was just being unreasonable anyway.

She had made it to within half a block of her apartment when she realized that in her rush to find the man with red hair, she'd left her purse in the dressing room. It had her key in it.

Swearing artfully, she turned around and stalked back to the _Court_, feeling out of place in her slinky dress and thick fur coat in broad daylight. She was a nocturnal creature. She didn't fit in with the people who walked under the sunlight and slept when it went down.

All of a sudden, her stiletto heel caught viciously in a crack in the pavement and snapped off painfully. "Son of a _whore_," she snarled, burying her hand into her thick auburn hair to prevent herself from punching the nearest hapless pedestrian. No dinner date, no key, her best heels broken... this was clearly not her day.

"Not bad for a girl," a voice said from behind her.

She rounded on him with full intention of tearing a strip or three off this obnoxious jerk, but stopped dead when she met a familiar pair of dark eyes and a self-confident smirk. "You," she said calmly, her mind too preoccupied with suddenly finding the person she'd been looking for the moment she gave up to be angry right at the moment.

"Yo," he said, and lazily half-saluted. "You look to be having one of those days. Can I help with something?"

Abruptly, she felt like crying. Nobody was nice to anyone else in this city normally. He'd caught her off guard. "I broke my heel," she said simply, "and I left my purse back at work. I'm tired and hungry and don't have a date for dinner tonight, and I just spent the last four hours looking for you to ask you if you'd like to have Italian with me tonight. Now here you are out of nowhere, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary with that big dumb grin. Do you have any idea how much you _piss me off_, Red?" Dimly she realized that she was ranting with her hands on her hips at a completely dumbstruck man who probably had no idea what the hell she was on about. "Damn, I'm sorry," she said, reining herself in with a sigh. "It's been a bit of a long night."

"...Can I talk now?" he asked, quite obviously surpressing a laugh.

She tossed her hair and looked away. "Sure, go right ahead."

"One: I have a car. I'll drive you back to the lounge and then home. Two: I'd totally love to have dinner with you, I haven't eaten anything homecooked in about a year. Three: I had no idea you were looking for me. Now I feel kinda really dumb for following you around all this time looking for a good opportunity to start a conversation."

"You were what?" she asked blankly, unable to assimilate that particular tidbit of information.

"Following you," he repeated calmly with a wide grin, but the faint hint of a blush across his cheekbones gave him away. "By the way, my name's Renji. I know it's a strange name, but so were my parents."

"Rangiku," she replied dazedly. "Mine's kind of strange too, so no problem."

"Great." Renji smiled and gestured dramatically off to the side. "Well then... your chariot awaits, m'lady."

She considered telling him that she'd always wanted someone to say that to her, but decided against it when she realized he wasn't listening anymore. Instead she closed her mouth and followed him.

It wasn't until later she'd realize that she was smiling without the slightest effort, a smile that had nothing to do with seducing an audience or impressing an employer, just with being happy about something at long last.

xxxxx

"Jesus Christ. This is _amazing_. Where did you learn to cook, Tuscany?"

"Papa Joe's Culinary Academy," she corrected with a pleased smile.

"Could have fooled me."

"My ex loved Italian food."

Renji paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. "Sorry, I didn't--"

She cut him off. "Trust me, it's not a sore topic. He was too ambitious to stay with me, and I respected myself too much to follow him. There's nothing left to talk about there."

"All right," Renji said. "I know how that feels, so I won't push you."

"You do?"

"We've all got stories, right?" he said uncomfortably. "Hey, can I pour you another?"

Rangiku held out her glass for a refill of champagne. "We do indeed. So what's yours? You're not the type I usually see hanging around the lounge alone late at night, and you've got really sad eyes. I've been dying of curiosity. But you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, of course... sorry for being rude."

He laughed and leaned his chair back, shoving his hands in his pockets. "It's no big tragedy," he said. "It was always my dream to be in the army, but when I finally got in, I took a bullet to the leg in my first week of service... in a training exercise. It healed dirty, so they sent me home. I can't run very well and it hurts like a whore when the weather changes."

"Damn," she murmured sympathetically. "Is there any chance you'll be able to get back in someday?"

He shook his head emphatically. "Nope. Not the slightest. A bum leg is a bum leg. It isn't ever gonna get better, so there's no point in hoping."

"That's kind of depressing," she said. "You'd better have another glass. Bubbly is good medicine."

"Apparently you also took your medical program from Papa Joe," he retorted wryly. "Drinking solves everything! Wine is the elixir of life!"

"Shut up!" she said with a laugh, reaching across to smack his thigh. "It _does!_"

He shook his head slowly, meeting her eyes. "No, it _doesn't_. It lets you forget for a bit, but it doesn't heal anything," he said quietly.

She sobered. "I know," she replied truthfully, "but I haven't found anything better yet. The wounds made by broken dreams are really resistant to modern medicine."

"Ooh, that's deep," he said teasingly. "Well, what about old medicine then, if modern doesn't work?"

Shrugging, Rangiku stood and began clearing the dishes and dumping them into the sink. "What kind of old medicine? Weird-smelling tea? Mud-packs? Voodoo?"

A pair of arms closed around her from behind.

She froze. She hadn't heard him move, and she'd only looked away from the table for about three moments. He was frighteningly fast, even with his bum leg.

"I was thinking more along these lines," he said into her hair, not moving to go any further than gently holding her. "Feel free to beat me senseless if I'm crossing some boundaries I shouldn't be."

Her mind to figure out as fast as possible whether he was crossing any boundaries or not, because if she waited too long to say yes or no he could fairly assume that she was fine. The strange thing was, she was actually pretty sure she _was_ fine, which was interesting. Most of the time, she hated to be touched. It came from long years of dealing with grope-happy drunk businessmen who tended to forget that she was just a singer, not a prostitute. She didn't mind it with her friends, when they got drunk and hung off each other happily singing off-key and stumbling down the streets.

This was neither of those, and somehow very different from how it had been with her ex-lover. That had felt dangerous, risky, thrilling in the way that dancing too near the edge of a cliff felt. This felt thrilling too, and carried its own danger, but... more than anything, she felt _safe._

"I think," she said, speaking slowly and carefully, "I'll take a rain-check on that beating and do this instead." She turned around in his arms, took his face in her hands, and pulled him down for a slow, exploratory kiss.

He didn't move except to convulsively tighten his hold around her.

His hair was glorious, she discovered as she casually learned her way around. It was powerfully healthy from root to tip, glossy and strong and perfect for curling her fingers into. His skin was also a marvel, she found as she absently unbuttoned his shirt, clear and tanned and stretched over a set of functional and well-maintained muscles.

The tattoos went very far down.

He asked if she was sure so many times she eventually threatened to kick him out if he didn't shut up and make love to her already. "That's an _order,_" she finished teasingly with a snicker.

He propped himself up on one arm so he could salute with the other, then winked and said "Yes, ma'am," with a perfect military clip. "Right away, ma'am."

Then he set about doing exactly as she'd ordered. An hour or so later, she came to the abrupt realization that she had not been happy since she had been seven years old, and to the twin realization that she was happy _now._ It was somewhat of a shock.

Afterwards, he lay with his head pillowed on her chest and his arms around her waist, his red hair spilling all over her throat and breasts, and she thought maybe he was happy too.

xxxxx

"Why are you singing in that dingy place?" he asked out of nowhere during lunch the next day. "You have the voice to be a real star, and you're not cut out to sing old depressing blues songs. Have you ever tried writing your own?"

"Where did that come from?" she asked, startled. "I sing there because that was where I could get a job. I'm not good enough to be a touring artist."

"Yeah, actually, you are," he corrected patiently. "And you haven't answered my other question-- have you ever tried writing your own?"

Rangiku sighed deeply. "Lyrics," she admitted finally. "I'm no good at melodies." Reaching over to a chest of drawers at the entrance to her living room, she pulled out a black folder full of loose paper. She handed it to him shyly. "They're not very good, but I always feel better after writing."

He took the folder and perused it with an introspective expression on his face. "Hmm."

"Hmm?" she echoed. "What does 'hmm' mean?"

"These are... pretty kickass. Definitely workable. As for me... I've been known to bang out a few chords on the piano before, and I know how to play the trumpet. I was in the military band for some time. My father was a musician with a big band, so I know a little bit about putting together a song. How's about you let me have these, and I write you some music to go with them? The end product will be some pretty damn decent jazz, if I'm not totally missing my guess."

"Jazz?" she said weakly. "I don't know..."

"Yeah, jazz," he pressed relentlessly. "You have the voice for it, and if you could make a connection with your audience, you have the personality for it too. Why don't you try it?"

"How? Where? When? I'd have to quit my job, you know, and if it didn't work I'd be screwed. I don't have any savings. Be reasonable, here."

Abruptly, Renji slammed his fist into the table, shocking her, and stood up to lean over it, his face coming to within half a foot of hers. Then he visibly caught himself and took a deep breath before opening his mouth. "If money wasn't an object, what would you want to do?" he asked determinedly, face set. "If you had the chance to try this without being in financial danger, would you be willing to try?"

"Yes!" she said, beginning to get a bit upset. "I'd love to! But money _is_ an object and I _don't_ have the chance, so it's a moot point! And none of your business in any case, incidentally."

He sank back into his seat with a heavy sigh. "Coward," he murmured under his breath, but not quietly enough for her to miss it.

_...I can't believe he just said that. That-- I'm going to-- for the love of--_

She flashed to anger in a single moment and flew around the table to grab him by the collar of his shirt. "Who the hell are you to talk?" she snarled. "You sit around the lounge moping like a kicked puppy, bemoaning your tragic fate and deciding that your life is over because you can't be in the army. Sure, I might be a coward, but you're no less of one. Have the guts to look life in the face before you come preaching to me." She let go of his shirt and stalked into the kitchen to attack the dishes with a vengeance.

For several minutes, only silence came from behind her, and her anger smoldered steadily deeper into her chest.

Then suddenly, she heard the chair scrape as he stood up. "Sorry," he said distantly. "You're right."

She refused to reply.

He pulled his jacket on, grabbed his keys and wallet from the table in the hallway, and opened the door. "Thanks for dinner," he said over his shoulder. "It was really good." The door closed behind him with a harsh click.

Rangiku's knees gave out. She sank to the floor and leaned against the cupboards, then pulled her knees up to her chest and decided resolutely not to cry even as the first tears spilled over and down her cheeks.

xxxxx

There followed the second-worst afternoon of her life. The worst had been the day her ex-lover had left, but as this afternoon wore on, she began to wonder if maybe this was even worse. She'd expected him to leave, but she hadn't expected Renji to. At least, not yet, and not in such a state of anger.

Suddenly, she realized that her folder of lyrics was gone. He'd taken it with him.

_Why?_ she thought miserably. _What are you going to do with those? Or did you just take them as payback for my calling you a coward to your face? Jerk. Jerk, jerk, jerk!_

She couldn't cry for long. Her eyes would turn red, and what would her audience think then? Performers had to look perfect no matter what sorry state their hearts were in, and she was a performer to the bones.

So after a few minutes, she picked herself up off the kitchen floor, finished cleaning her apartment, and got ready for work.

Life would go on. Even if she did feel more miserable than she'd felt in years.

The show must go on.

xxxxx

Ironically, the set that night was probably one of her best since she'd started. All her pent-up anger and hurt spilled out through her voice, making the songs much more passionate and heartfelt than usual. The audience actually paid attention for once, and tipped her handsomely when she was done.

She felt better for a little while for having expressed herself, but when she stepped out onto the freezing street and realized that he was probably never going to come listen to her again, she felt like crying all over again. That irritated her, since she was not given to crying usually and thought it a sissy thing to do in most cases. Still... the empty seat in the far corner and the neat whisky that hadn't been ordered gnawed at the corners of her mind like little black holes, inexorably drawing her attention back to them.

_Damn, but it's cold_, she thought, and drew her coat a little higher around her throat. She was beautiful and she knew it, but all it ever seemed to attract was scumbags and jerks, so it wasn't like it made her happy. She liked to throw wild parties with obscene amounts of liquor, but she never let anyone into her bedroom no matter how inebriated she got. She was self-confident and rarely regretted decisions that she'd made, but sometimes she wished for someone to reassure her with a smile that she'd made the right choice.

That was Rangiku-- strong, beautiful, and terribly lonely.

She didn't need anyone. That didn't mean she didn't _want_ someone to be there.

xxxxx

The next day, she called in sick to work, took a cab across the city to moderately decent bar, and set about getting uproariously drunk.

Within minutes she had a man sitting on either side of her and had the bartender wrapped around her finger. She smiled and spoke intelligently about nothing, and within a few hours either of the men would probably have married her.

She was bored stiff. They were idiots, she wasn't, and that was all there really was to it. Tired, she paid the bill, said goodbye, and walked out. The first cab she flagged stopped, and the driver leered at her.

Sighing, she got in anyway and ignored his ceaseless prattle in favour of counting streetlights. They all blurred into each other with the alcohol warping her vision, but she liked it better that way-- they looked softer, less glaring... more organic than artificial. They were almost pretty, continuous apricot streams across her vision.

The apartment was silent when she unlocked the door and closed it behind her. Not a breath of life aside from her own.

_How horribly depressing_, she thought, and went straight to bed with the half-hearted intention to never get up again.

Outside her window as her eyes drifted shut, the sun cleared the horizon.

xxxxx

The seat and glass remained empty the next day. The day after that was the same, as was the day that followed it and the day that followed that one.

Rangiku resigned herself to never seeing him again.

xxxxx

'Never' lasted for nine days.

On the evening of that ninth day, a man with red hair and black tattoos burst in through the double doors at the back, strode up to the stage, and essentially kidnapped the stunning young lounge singer who had been in the middle of her set, dragging her off without a word of explanation.

"What the _fuck,_" Rangiku snapped when he finally came to stop in front of his car.

Her heart wrestled with itself over the utter euphoria she felt at the sight of his familiar face and fury at his sheer gall. She'd probably only get paid half-time for the night's work thanks to him rudely interrupting her set.

"Sorry," he said breathlessly, then shoved a black folder into her hands and smiled widely.

Rangiku looked at it, and then ran trembling fingers over the cover. "My lyrics," she said softly. "Why did you take them?"

"Look inside and see," he replied, sounding about ready to burst with self-satisfaction. "Go on, look!"

Raising an eyebrow, she flipped the cover open and rifled through the pages inside. Her eyes grew steadily wider, until she gasped and looked up to meet his eyes. "You wrote music to go with them," she stated incredulously. "You actually went through with it. Why?"

He rolled his eyes, then shoved an accusatory finger into her sternum. "I told you, you dense woman. You have the voice for it. I want to hear you sing songs that belong to _you_, not another generation. Come on, I have a piano at my house. Come sing for me."

She gaped at him. "Renji. I'm at work. I can't just _leave._"

"Sure you can," he said cheerfully. "You quit. You can tell them tomorrow. Now, you're going to come to my house and sing with me. Got it?"

"...Got it," she heard herself say before she could even begin to think logically again.

And that was how she found herself in a modest but very well-appointed house in the suburbs, using a ladle as a microphone to sing along to an aggressively but skillfuly played piano at one in the morning.

The songs were fantastic. Renji's music was not about subtlety. They went straight for the point they were trying to get across, and suited her honest lyrics perfectly. They were loud, proud, and grounded songs that most anyone could relate to.

Rangiku hadn't had this much fun in years.

When the neighbours came to complain a while later, she gaily invited them in for wine and biscuits. They accepted, and it became somewhat of a party.

Renji's smile was just as blinding as hers.

xxxxx

In the morning, Rangiku called the _Court_. She was somewhat hungover, but not enough to impair her speech. It was one of the high points of her life so far to tell them that no, she would not be apologizing for disappearing the night before; no, she would not be returning to work that evening; and no, she would as a matter of fact not be returning _ever_.

"Hell yeah!" Renji yelled exuberantly as she hung up the phone. "That's my girl!"

"So, now what?" she asked half-laughing, half-seriously. "I've quit my job and I have practically no savings. Have any bright ideas?"

"Well, actually, yeah," Renji answered with a self-satisfied smirk. "I have a gig lined up for you across town. Ritzy place. All you have to do is say yes."

Rangiku stared at him, halfway to tears. "You're kidding."

"Not a word of a lie, scout's honour. So, what do you say? Wanna sing?"

Almost before he could finish speaking, she tackled him at a flying run, catapulting both of them onto the couch. She pressed kisses all over his startled but pleased face, then one long, deep one on his lips. "Yes, I want to sing," she told him. "I want to sing forever."

"So be it," he said. "I'd be honoured if you'd let me write your songs, or at least some of them."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she told him.

"Great," Renji said with a grin, then leaned up and kissed her quickly. "With that in mind... either get off and let me at that piano, or..."

Rangiku threw her shoe at the lightswitch, effectively answering his unfinished question.

She had tattoos to memorize.

**XxxxxxxxxxxxX**

**A/N: **And so ends the great Experiment. :D Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

-Eia


End file.
